Bird Droppings July 28, 2025

Looking for synchronous moments

Every year for five or so I have had lunch during teacher preplanning with my oldest son and a good friend whom I used to coteach with. Today was that day, and following, I walked around the school visiting with old friend from the high school where I taught for almost twenty years. Many of my discussions tended to be about teaching and learning seem which always comes up when I sit down to talk.  As I think back to starting at the High School on 9/11/2001, going back into the classroom after twenty-plus years away from it, and all the various rooms I had at LHS, so many great memories. My first day back was quite synchronous. During my first period, we were put in lockdown.

My first profound encounter with the idea of synchronicity was possibly at Mercer in one of my psychology classes, but I had forgotten about it, in all honesty. The school of psychology at Mercer was more Jungian than Freudian, even though experimental psychology and Skinner’s ideas seeped through. Many times, in my droppings, I reference the impact of and found the book The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. Redfield led me to read further about Carl Jung and gain a deeper understanding of synchronicity. One of the first authors I sought out was Thomas Moore, and then James Hillman, and this was a period coinciding with the reading of Redfield. I began seeing the implications of synchronicity in my daily life. I sat down one day and jotted notes about the synchronous events in my past and current life.

Every morning, as I can, weather permitting, I go and take pictures of the sunrise and meditate, listening to Carlos Nakai as I drive around. At first, years back, I didn’t approach each morning wondering what synchronous event I would witness. Now I know every morning something special will happen. I share a photo of the event, sometimes even a video, if I can. Several months back, I saw my first bobwhite in nearly twenty years. The next day, a bobwhite was sitting at a spot I photograph almost every day, calling away, and I videoed. Sometimes, it is simply a deer crossing in front of me or sitting looking at me while I drive by. Sometimes, a hawk or owl will pose on a post right beside me as I am taking a picture of a sunrise. Today, as an afterthought, I drove out of my way to go to Kroger down our dirt road. A fawn greeted me, and as I passed the fawn, a red trumpet flower.

Over the past few years, I have started to think about my life, which has led to this point. My birth was a good beginning on All Saints Day in Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Reading, Pennsylvania. I started with that point and jotted down various happenings along the way within our family. One by one, these points added to my developing life experience and journey. Additional crucial points were the different colleges I attended and events that occurred, and finally, I moved to Georgia. My timeline was becoming rather intriguing. I met my wife Pat at another synchronous event. I was to work at Camp Martha Johnson in Lizella, Georgia, for the Middle Georgia Girl Scouts Council. Pat had been approved and was to go to Europe on a Girl Scout international exchange for the summer. Two days before she was to go, she changed her mind and decided to go back to work as a counselor at Camp Martha Johnson. I have often wondered, what if she went to Europe and we did not meet?

I shared that I was going to work in publishing and eventually teaching. There were numerous synchronous points along the way as I ended up at Loganville High School. It is easy to see each event coming up, a choice made, and the pathway that was taken as I look back. So here I am, many years along, having just recently submitted my dissertation for defense about teaching, storytelling, and learning. I admit I may embellish as I tell my stories, but the events and happenings have a basis. Perhaps my once nonfiction event is now fiction, but I will try to keep it as close to the actual events as possible.

My thinking was encouraged by friends and graduate school, as the more I read, the more I questioned and searched for deeper meaning. Several good friends from high school were searching for answers at the same time as I was, and had also started reading James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy. We would share authors and books and, in one case, a psychic.

Some events I discussed previously and will only allude to; others have more significance in forming my education and teaching philosophy. My background in theology and religion drew me to Parker Palmer, and my readings in Native thought combined. I began to see a spiritual connection with synchronicity and teaching others. Spirituality is not a good word to bring up in public schools, so finding innovative ways to make connections and provide opportunities for those connections has become a way of life for me as a teacher. I find ways to build relationships and trust with students’ interconnections.

Years ago, when working with emotionally disordered students, I had an introductory exercise that I had started using with myself a few years prior. I would pass out a sheet of plain paper and ask each student to draw a line across the paper. I explained we would use the left side of the paper as a starting point and work across the paper to the right side. I explained this was very private and that only I would look over their shoulders as they worked on this assignment. I wrote the word synchronicity on the board and presented it to them. I tried to use several of my events to guide them in drawing their timeline. What events in your life impacted you, and where are you today? The first few minutes were always tricky, but once they realized how simple this was, some went to great elaborate detail. After everyone was finished, I asked if I could review that evening. I would not share with anyone. Only I would see the timelines.

That first night, reviewing what my students had written and or drawn, opened my eyes to how disconnected we, as teachers, are from our students. Some events, fortunately, were more joyful and made me feel a little better. My students wrote about jail, drugs, sex, death, and violence. I was able to have at least a rough idea of who these kids were beyond my second-period resource class. I realized in the first few weeks how significant it was to build relationships with the students by trying to understand what they are bringing to school each day that we, as teachers, do not see. My psychology kicked in, and I recalled an adage on behavior termed ABC: antecedent, behavior, and consequence.

To control behavior, you must work with consequences and or antecedents. The antecedents are all that stuff they bring to school; we, as teachers, have little control over. I even coined this the sixteen-hour syndrome. Teachers have students for eight hours, and society has them for sixteen.

Teach where the learning will be, not where it is. I wrote this down several years ago, paraphrasing a quote I thought was from the great ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky. Gretsky is still the all-time leading scorer in NHL history. However, as I researched this sometimes-overused quote, I found that Gretzky was not the author. In her article in Fast Company Magazine, Jill Rosenfeld, CDU to Gretzky: The Puck Stops Here! Clarifies that it was his father, Walter, who had been yelling at Wayne as a child.

“Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”

Like the hockey player Gretzky is addressing far too often, we get caught up in the past. We fixate on the content we taught yesterday or a piece of the curriculum we have for the state test. I think we all tend to do this in our lives as well. Focusing too often on the past can be a problematic cycle to break. I spent the better part of yesterday avoiding my direction, so intent on the past, I missed the current and future cues. As an empathetic human being, I get caught up at times in the emotions and feedback of the present. I can be a formidable teacher and advocate when I allow my wisdom to kick in and help determine the implications and directions.

So, as I sit here today pondering my previous day, present moment, and future, I see the interplay that so easily can be hidden by focusing solely on the moment. So, I took a swig from my meditative mug of chai tea and read Eagle Man, Ed McGaa’s book Nature’s Way: Native Wisdom for Living in Balance with the Earth, diving into it a bit deeper.

“I do not write from mythology when I reflect upon Native American spirituality in this book. In my own opinion, mythology leads to superstition, and superstition has caused fatal destruction to millions of people over time. It is ironic, then, that Dominant Society accuses Native practices of being based on myth.” Ed McGaa

So seek those interconnections in your life and those synchronicities. I had too many directions today, and as I wind down, please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and your heart’s namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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